5 Times They Were Ghouls and 1 Time He Was Human
by Skiewrites
Summary: Growing up in Japan, Shiro was used to the anti-ghoul propaganda. So, when he moved to the US, he was surprised that ghouls the right to live there, let alone go to space. However, being sent on a mission to space with two ghouls and supplies for them was very different than being in charge of four teen ghouls while fighting a galactic empire and having a lack of supplies.
1. I - Matt

**TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF BLOOD, GORE, DEATH AND CANNIBALISM DUE TO THE NATURE OF GHOULS**

* * *

 _"Ghouls live among us, the same way as normal people in every way – except their craving for human flesh."_

Tokyo Ghoul, Volume one

* * *

Having grown up in Tokyo, Japan, Shiro grew up with anti-ghoul propaganda, courtesy of the Japanese CCG, being shoved down his throat, to the point that he could probably recite them off the top of his head if asked.

It was now just a fact of life that in every dark corner of the streets of Tokyo, a ghoul laid, resting silently, ready to pounce onto un an unsuspecting pedestrian as they walked past, more interested in their destinations than their surroundings. While he had grown up in one of the more peaceful wards of Tokyo, the fear and violence of the other wards was enough to put the fear of ghouls into human.

It wasn't like he had been raised to like ghouls either. No, he was raised on children bedtime stories of ghouls eating him for misbehaving, young teens boating about how many ghoul attacks they had been in and lived to tell the tale, and the hushed conversations of grownups at parks and parties, scared for their lives as they pondered over the latest ghoul attack.

So boy was he surprised when he moved to America after his grandfather's death to find that ghouls had rights.

Right to marriage, rights to the freedom of speech, the right to shelter, the right to food (though there were _lots_ of heavy scrutiny, rules and regulations when it came to this part of the Ghoul's Rights Act 2047), and the right to live.

It was a really wired concept for him to grasp.

He deals with it, well he learns how to put his worries about ghouls to rest as he knows that ghouls are not a threat to humanity here, as they are fed whatever came in the container that they handed out to the ghoul students at the Garrison. Like in Japan, its hard to identify who is a ghoul and who isn't, but, unlike in Japan, there isn't as much worry about them.

Sure, there's still the discrimination of being a ghoul in a human society, but, if he was reading his pre-mission report correctly, even the bad stigma of ghouls was disappearing.

"I understand that in your culture, Shirogane, ghouls are considered dangerous, but the mission requires the minds of-"

"I don't care if they're ghouls, as long as they can do their jobs." Shiro interrupted Iverson, looking up from the tablet to stare at the eyepatched man. There were rumours within the Garrison that he lost his eye to a rouge ghoul out in the desert while on a scouting mission, but Shiro highly doubted it. He watched as the commander sighed with relief, obviously happy that he didn't need to convince him to stay and fly in a shuttle with two fully grown ghouls for months on end.

This was going to go wrong in so many ways.

* * *

He doesn't meet the ghouls, people, they were people, about a week after getting assigned the mission, as, while having originated from Italy, they had moved over to DC to live out the American life. From what Shiro could gather, it was a very long process for a ghoul to immigrant, and often enough it was rejected due to the country they were coming from was already too high with ghoul violence, like Japan and surprisingly enough Cuba, where it was too hard to disprove they had never killed a human before.

Unfortunately, he was only able to meet of the people today, Matthew Holt as Commander Holt, the superior officer in charge of the mission as well as his father, was stuck in a meeting in DC still, something to do with making the politicians happy with the mission brief.

The meeting was set in one of the many classrooms that the Garrison in Arizona had to offer, as the other had all but demanded so, as he didn't want to be 'stuck in a stuffy board room all day' as the email put it, which was fair enough in Shiro's mind, because he was dreading the time when all the mission previews came up, which of course meant being stuck in a stuffy room all day listening to politics, something that the Commander wasn't able to get out of, even this early into the pre-mission planning.

He got to the classroom about 10 minutes early, to anxious about meeting them to stay away any longer. It was a standard size, with a hologram at the front of the class for presentations and videos as well as a whiteboard behind it, something that the engineer students would moan about because of something that uses AR technology as well the hologram that helped the teacher draw in the 3D plain, something that, as a pilot, Shiro could just not understand.

There are the 30 standard desks, each equipped with their own standard chair and the standard amount of graffiti since the Garrison couldn't afford to buy new ones and couldn't be bothered to yell at the students for the drawing, though some of them were pretty good. There was of course, the teacher's desk at the front of the class, holding a computer that looked like it was made in the 2020's and its own chair, this one with a computer chair. Around the room, what could have been millions of formulae that each engineer needed to work out the right numbers for the things they were making and fixing as well as a tablet trolley located at the back of the room, charging up to about 40. Sighing, he sat one of the desks in the front row, and got out his phone, hoping it would calm his nerves.

So, Shiro spent the ten minutes up to the meeting on his phone, trying to complete a level on Candy Crush, one of the most addictive retro games still on the market, with levels still being created for the blasted thing, while he continuously looking back at the time at the top right-hand corner of his device. He then gives up as he's expecting the other person to come at any moment, and waited five minutes, expecting the mysterious ghoul to appear.

When the five turns in ten, he opened his emails, checks that he had gotten the right time, clicks off the email, only to go back on it two minutes later.

When ten turns to twenty, he stood up and checked outside the classroom to see if he was waiting there, only to see two kids walk past in their uniform talking elaboratively about how there was definitely a nacho planet out there in deep space. He blinked, processing on the conversation he just overheard, then went back into the classroom, and started to walk laps around the desk, checking the email for a third time to see if he at least cancelled the meeting.

The twenty turns to half an hour, no emails arrives, not even spam, and neither does Matthew Holt. Huffing with annoyance, Shiro made his way to the door only for it to slid open, with a brown-haired boy standing at the doorway, out of breath and hair a rat's nest, his glasses hanging off the end of his nose and missing an ear completely, making it look like he'd ran into several walls on the way here, and, judging by the way that one hand was held to his nose with small bits of blood dripping through, that event seemed likely to have happened.

"I'M REALLY SORRY I'M LATE I SLEPT IN PLEASE DON'T BE ANGRY OR KILL ME!"

Blinking in surprise, Shiro could only see that the person in from of him was clearly a complete mess, and that everyone, including Matthew Holt, needed protection from this disaster on legs.

This is what Shiro waited 40 minutes to meet?

Well, it's not like Shiro had anything better to do in the meantime.

* * *

 **A.N. Hey, so I have had this idea ever since reading Swordbird98's crossover, Paladins are Friends, Not Food (which is totally amazing so you should go and check it out), but, instead of Lance being the only ghoul, I have made Shiro the only human, but he is still space dad, don't you worry. I might do some more oneshots of this at a later date, depending how well this goes, but I want to finish this first.**

 **Enjoy!**


	2. II - Keith

_"We can't crush evil with morals. We are justice. We are morality."_

Tokyo Ghoul - Volume Two

* * *

The next couple of weeks are spent getting to know Matt ("Call me Matthew again Shirogane and I will get my non-existent kagane out and commit a homicide"), however, most of it was spend trying to make sure that this ghoul actually survived until the mission, which itself presented as a more dangerous task than he had previously thought it would be, because he was worse than the mess on legs that Shiro initially pegged him as, an achievement that Matt was very proud of for some reason.

In the past week alone, Matt has walked into a door, two doorframe and a wall face on, banged his head on something 9 times, stubbed the same toe on the same table in the staffroom 7 times, each time being the exact same way, and pulled an allnighter skyping his younger sister so they could both play video games, causing him to have two Red Bulls and 4 coffees in an hour, spilling his last Red Bull onto his keyboard, which then caused him to hit his head against the desk, which then caused the monitor to fall, pulling the wires out of the screen while said screen crashed onto the floor. If that wasn't bad enough, the live wired sparked onto the spilt Red Bull, causing a fire on his desk which ended in a whole building evacuation and part of the staffroom unusable for at least a month.

Meaning to say, he wasn't very popular with the staff, the students thought he was brilliant and Shiro was more shocked than anything that he isn't dead by now, something that he straight up told Commander Holt ("Please call me Sam") when he first met him.

It was also this event that caused Shiro to start packing a mini first aid kit with extra plasters whenever he decided to be within 500 meters of the ghoul, much to Matt's delight, though he did tell Shiro that it wouldn't do much for him due to his species.

("Ghouls have a faster healing rate, you know that right Takashi?

"Knowing you, you'll need it anyway."

"Your trust in me is heart warning.")

However, the first time he uses his kit wasn't for Matt, it was for the student who decided that training in the middle of the night with a knife without adult supervision was a great idea.

Shiro frowned as he wrapped the cut on this forearm, putting the bandage taunt to make sure there was pressure on the wound to help stop the bleeding. The kid didn't even seem to notice the added pressure, almost mesmerised by they way that the cloth span around his arm, the knife he was training with held loosely in the other, non-injured hand.

"You don't have to do this." He muttered as Shiro looked up to see the kid's face, his dark hair covering most of his face and eyes, leaving nothing but small glimpses of his violet eyes to be seen.

"What, for you to walk off bleeding out? I bet you weren't going to talk to anyone about this, was you?" Shiro asked, trying to keep a bitter tone out of his voice. The cadet merely shrugged.

"Wouldn't matter. It'll heal in a couple days anyway." The younger mumbled, causing Shiro to frown until he realised what he was truly saying.

"Yeah, well, ghoul or not, getting hurt during training will not make you any better at fighting, you do know that right?" Shiro replied rhetorically, and felt a little better about what he said when the boy hung his head more, showing that he understood what Shiro was saying. The older man pinched his lips as he tied the wrap, noting the way that the ghoul seemed to be waiting for Shiro to said about his species.

While there was less propaganda against ghouls here compared to anti-ghoul territories like Japan, there still were lots of problems with humans who used their status over ghouls, especially in places like the Garrison. Matt was lucky to have a father in command, as he never felt this pressure form the other staff, something that he knew and was well aware of. However, Shiro knew that there were teachers like Iverson who constantly dragged these students down. He always said during the staff meetings that he was doing that to make them prepared for the real world, so that they were equipped for what the work place would be like for them.

Which of course was a load of bullshit, in Matt's words, but it there wasn't a lot that neither he nor Shiro could do about it.

After he finished with the bandaging, he carefully took the knife from the kid's hand, admiring th3 shape and how weirdly balanced it was due to its odd material, thumb lightly running over the rags that were tied around the hilt.

"So, why is a ghoul training with a knife?" The kid looked up sharply to stare at Shiro, disbelief written all over his face.

"You're not going to yell at me for training?" The kid looked very angry at the thought of Shiro not doing his job, but he only smiled and handed back the knife.

"Yeah, well, I've got a feeling that me shouting at you isn't going to stop you from training in the middle of the night with a knife of all things." Shiro stated as he watched the boy's face go red.

"Yeah, well, training with my kagane is just exhausting after a couple of nights. The Garrison's food does not have enough RC cells in them for that kind of workout." He muttered, tucking the knife away into the small of his back, where Shiro suspected a sheath was held for the knife. How he managed to get that pass security was beyond him.

"I take it you'll be back in a couple of nights at least, maybe even tomorrow?" Shiro asked as he stood up and started to pack away his medical kit, noting that he should pick up some more gauze before the kid or even Matt hurt themselves again.

"Why, so you can come along to stop me again?" Shiro smiled back at the kid, who was looking down at his arm with a weird look in his eyes, as if he had never seen a covered wound like this before.

"Only to make sure that you don't hurt yourself too badly again, and to make sure that there isn't any blood on the floor, because then I'll have to do something about it." The older man said in a serious tone, but the smile on his face betrayed him. The kid blushed and started to walk away, with a muttered "Keith Kogane" left behind like a small gift.

Keith, hu. It suited him.

.

.

.

(And if he started to lose sleep because this small ghoul with too much anger at the world was keeping him up with his crazy training regimen, well, he wasn't complaining, especially when he saw Keith smile dreamily just that little bit when he talked about his crush on a cargo pilot afterwards.)

.

.

.

(And if he started to eat with not one but two ghouls at lunch, with him being the only one who could eat what the kitchen staff made, well, it would only be his grandfather rolling around in his grave.)

.

.

.

(And if he was the only human to be abducted by aliens when on a mission only to go and fight in a life-or-death battle again and again and again, because his ghoul friend couldn't even form a proper kagune, causing him to lose an arm and gain some PTSD, well, he would say to all the people he met in the future that he would do it again if he must.)

.

.

.

(Shirogane Takashi may have grown up and taught to hate ghouls, now he was best friends with two of the species, and thus, would do anything for them, to the point of death.)


	3. III - Pidge

_...I have to do something._

 _There should be things I'm capable of doing as well._

 _The only thing I can do..._

 _That person's words really got me thinking..._

 _This world is wrong._

Tokyo Ghoul, Volume Three

* * *

At first, space was a wonder, a beauty, a gift that he was allowed to explore. Nothing could properly describe how he felt during take-off, the adrenaline rush he gained from breaking through Earth's atmosphere, the feeling of breathlessness that would overcome him while he flew with the stars.

His passengers, too, were awestruck with the things they were doing. The chance to not only go into space as ghouls, a feat that would have been impossible not 3 years ago, but to the one of the first beings to set foot on the moon must furthest out in their atmosphere. They were finally space explorers, and nothing could take that away from them.

Except, the Galra did just that.

Just like that, space became cold.

Unforgiving.

Empty.

The year he spent in the Galra's grasp was simultaneously stretch to eternity and over in a blink. One moment he's fighting for his life in the arena, his arm suddenly missing, leaving a bloody painful stump. The next, he wakes up on a table surrounded by humans, wondering how he suddenly got there and a single word racing through his mind: Voltron.

He blinked again, and he wakes again, though he doesn't remember sleeping, this time it was on a lumpy sofa he laid on instead of a cold metal table, in a shack in the middle of the desert, surrounded by Keith, a mini Matt lookalike and two other teens, with a metal arm that felt too heavy for him to lift and too many questions on what was beyond the planet's reach.

He was surrounded by dust, lots of it, and everywhere he looked there was the rough ends of cut string, pins lying dangerously all over the place, and, surprisingly enough, the odd bit of food wrapper that were definitely not ghoul friendly. When he looked at them, then to Keith, then back at the wrappers pointedly, Keith at least as the decency to look as if he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and shrugged at him before looking away, back towards the pin board covered in pictures and explaining what he had been doing since Shiro was announced dead.

Wait, why wasn't Keith at the Garrison?

He gets no answer to his unvoiced question, and instead more rise when mentions of weird energies were brought up, and mysterious caves as well as the demanding question: what, exactly is Voltron?

Well, he finds out that it's more than a huge alien robotic blue lion not three hours later.

* * *

He half listens to the alien, Allura, Princess Allura, go on about the Lions and what Voltron is exactly while looking at the teens, now his teammates, gauging their reactions and how he should respond to them.

The only thing that he would think of was that they were far, far, _far_ , too young to be doing this.

(There a voice in his mind that tells him that he too is too young, but he squashes it into a small closet in the back of his mind. This isn't what they need right now.)

(This isn't what he needs either.)

"Once all the lions are united, you will form Voltron, the most powerful warrior ever known to the Universe."

Shiro couldn't help but feel his heart drop at her words and then listening to Hunk's and Pidge's amazement at what Voltron truly was. It hurt to see their innocence, and to know that soon, very soon, there was going to a reality check hitting the both of them square in the face, showing them the nasty parts of being the hero. Keith was, of course, broodily staring at the hologram, as if his eyes could pierce through the coding and tell him the answers to the questions he had all his life. Lance too was quiet, uncharacteristically so, and when Shiro looked at him closer, he realised that the Cuban had already realise the reality of the situation, he understood the graveness, and the dangers, the nitty, gritty parts of what was to come from being a Paladin of Voltron.

He had already lost his innocence, saddening to see in someone so young, and it made Shiro wonder what he went through to think like that.

Then he was glad that Lance was the right leg of Voltron, the one who would take the first step forward for all of them, making sure they went in the right direction.

As he beings to give his first orders as the Black Paladin of Voltron, telling everyone that he'll take Pidge to get the Green Lion, Lance'll take Blue and Hunk to get the Yellow Lion and Keith would stay here to keep an eye out for the Red Lion, he couldn't help but feel grateful that Lance was on his team.

* * *

Shiro sat in the back of the canoe with the sloth-like alien, while Pidge sat in the front, watching down the river, as if expecting something to jump out of the water, though, Shiro doubted he was worried about the space fish that lurked underneath the water.

He looked so much like Matt from the back.

The hair colour was slightly off, and it was much shorter than Shiro last remembered seeing Matt. It was obviously self-cut, too choppy for it to have been done by a professional. His build was much small too, as, while Matt was much more lanky, Pidge just seemed… small. His glasses seemed to be a replica of Matt's too, as they seemed to be a bit too big for the smaller male with similar scratches on the frames and the slight wobble where the right side was attached higher than the left side, making it almost as if…

…As if they were Matt's to begin with.

Shiro had heard a lot about Katie Holt, Matt's little sister considered to be one of the greatest things in the other's life. During the flight to Kerberos, and even before, Matt would boast about how smart his little sister was, stating that she was easily smarter than he was, but was more interested in causing trouble than doing something good with her intelligence.

Matt, of course, defended this, stating that she was still only 14, that it didn't really matter if she didn't want to do anything other than pranks or attempting to hack into government's databases at her age, as that's what kids her age wanted to do, and he was just glad that she acted normal despite her smarts. She didn't even care about learning how to fight with her kagune, though she had learned the basics like any other ghoul that grew up into the US, as she was more interested in being a hermit living off the web and coding rather than rough housing with all the other ghouls living in her area.

Suddenly, all the questions about the Kerberos Mission made a bit more sense, and Shiro couldn't help but regret having her here, filled with innocence and life, looking for the Green Lion.

But, by the looks of it, she wanted to find her brother, and wouldn't want it any other way, no matter what Shiro would say to try and convince her.

"-ator. But hey, I can't be that worse than Lance. He crashed all the time. But what if I get in there and it doesn't respond? What if I get in there and it's too big and my feet don't touch the pedals? What if there aren't even pedals?!" Shiro sighed as he tuned into the rambling, getting a weird sense of déjà vu to when Matt was worrying about their press conference and all the questions he'll get asked due to being a ghoul.

( _"What if they don't like me and the Garrison decided to take me off the mission after all?"_

 _"They can't do that, y'know, as it's too close to take-off to train another person to take your place. And anyway, I think the media are going to love you, ghouls around the world are going to look up to you because of what you're going, you know that right?"_

 _"Really, you think so?"_

 _"I know so"_ )

"You're rambling. Listen... Our commander on the Kerberos Mission is the smartest man I ever met, and he always said, 'If you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great'." Shiro stated, and smiled when he saw her father's words relax Katie's nerves, but then he frowned.

He was stuck in space with too ghouls. It wasn't a situation that was new to him, but, unlike last time, he didn't have any food with him to feed them.

He was going to have to solve that problem, and soon.


	4. IV - Hunk

_Even if it's a life in shackles..._

 _If you had somebody who accepts you for who you really are..._

 _How reassuring would that be?_

Tokyo Ghoul, Volume Four

* * *

The moment he stepped into the Black Lion, he suddenly understood Lance's joy of flying the Blue Lion for the first time, even if he did so dangerously (for the passengers at the very least). The feeling of the Black Lion making a connection through his mind and how the vague feelings of the others also trickled through, something that got stronger and stronger as the battle wore on, until they all finally formed Voltron, making him feel a peace in his heart that he didn't know he was missing, and, for the first time in a long while, he felt as if he could properly breath, even if it was the strange atmosphere of Ares, or the recycled air of the Castle of the Lions.

Looking at the rest of the team, sitting with their respective lions, he could see that they too were mesmerised by the mystical bond of the Lions.

Coran led them all inside of the castle, and, after being there for the better part of a day, or what Shiro felt was an Earth day, his internal clock had been skewed since going to space, gave them a tour of the major parts of the castle, showing them where the control room, observational deck, the kitchen, the training deck, the communal bathrooms, and the rooms that they would be staying, all of them being in all of them being in a single corridor, all next to one another, all apparently containing all the things that they would ever need, all colour coded too, much to Coran's pride.

Shiro didn't think that Lance could go into a room fast enough, slamming the door behind him muttering about his skin schedule being thrown off due to the 'Voltron Business' as he so eloquently put it, and how his beauty sleep was an essential part to it. Hunk had smiled to this, though it didn't seem to reach his eyes, and entered the room right his best friend's. Pidge had frowned, and muttered about seeing the prisoners in the pods, putting her bag from Earth into her room and quickly leaving it with a laptop, following Coran back to the pod room. Sighing, Shiro turned to Keith, who was looking off to the distance, as if he had x-ray vision and was trying to see the Galra's next move.

He had grown in the last year, though not by much, as much as it annoyed him, Shiro thought. His hair had also grown, and looked choppier, as if he had been the last to cut it rather than someone else, and knowing Keith he probably did. The jacket seemed new, but he also hadn't seen the kid outside of his Garrison uniform either, so he didn't have a good baseline to properly guess. Something he did know, however, is that he was much more guarded, his eyes much harder, his arms almost always crossed to stop people from getting too close.

Shiro hated the fact that he left him behind.

(He had left Matt behind too.)

"How are you holding up?" Shiro asked, smiling at the younger kid. Keith looked back at him, frowning slightly before shrugging and looking away, not meeting his eyes, causing Shiro's heart to fall deeper than the pits of hell.

He had caused this.

"Well," Shiro said, placing his hand onto the shorter's shoulder, feeling the slight flinch that he had as a kid and never grown out of, "you can always talk to me, okay?"

"Only if you talk to me too." Keith muttered in reply, before walking towards the door to the left of Lance's, leaving Shiro with the one left to Keith, and smiled at Keith's words.

He knew him too well, even after being away for a year.

A year he still couldn't remember that well, for better, or for worse.

Sighing, he entered the room, and wasn't surprised to see a bed, a chest of drawers and a hanger near the door, just as Coran had described. It looked pristine, as if it was frozen for 10,000 years and only recently been unfrozen. Not even a speck of dust existed, making him wonder about the effectiveness of the filtering system, if it was able to stop the dust from building after such a long period of time. Sitting on the bed, he looked at the wall opposite, his human hand resting on the unknown fabric feeling the way that the fibres intertwined, and he wondered how he was going to be going about taking off the armour, as it formed to his shape so well that it almost looked impossible to take off again, especially the back under suit.

He quickly took of the chest plate, lifting it over his head, but by the time he had placed the strong material onto the bed, he felt a huge sense of paranoia being placed onto his shoulders, causing his arms to freeze up, leaving them still clutching onto it like a lifeline.

He couldn't take off the armour, not yet, it wasn't safe yet.

(Safe from what, he wouldn't be able to answer, as he knew he was safe, but he wasn't, he wasn't safe and he needed to be prepared for that, whatever that was.)

So he placed the armour back on, feeling comforted by the heavy weight on his chest, and quickly left the room, walking down the winding corridors of the castle that Coran had shown them down not even 15 minutes ago, and he couldn't but help be comforted by the sounds of his feet hitting the floor in a repetitive beat.

* * *

He checks in on Pidge first, sat by one of the pods containing one of the aliens they saved earlier that, typing away as fast as she could, oblivious to her surroundings. He wasn't sure what she was doing, as she was almost as bad as her brother when it came to hyper focus, as almost nothing could get them out of it unless they were physically stopped. Sam, their father, had explained it to him once on their way to Kerberos, telling him that, from a revolutionary standpoint, it had been an important skill that ghouls needed to properly hunt humans, however, nowadays, the skill was much less useful, if Matt's focus on the video game on the computer, trying to beat his sister's high score, had anything to say about it.

Because of that, he isn't that surprised when she didn't reply to him, nor give any response to show that she even knew that he had entered the room. Sighing affectionately, he noticed a spare blanket on one of the tables, probably left out by Coran, and placed it on her shoulders, shaking his head in disbelief when she still didn't react to the fabric being placed on her, and left the room, wondering down the corridor towards the observational deck, thinking that maybe the sight of the stars maybe able to lull his paranoia, like they used to with his anxiety.

He didn't quite get there, though, as, while on his way there, he heard a crash that made him freeze in his place, then make him run towards it, arm at the ready, prepared to take out anyone and anything that stood in the way between him and his goal of keeping his team safe, keeping the teens from coming to harm, because they were only kids and they don't deserve-

"Oh, err, hey Shiro." Shiro blinked, frowning as he looked around the Altean equivalent of the kitchen, looking from where Hunk was standing bashfully, embarrassed about being caught, surrounded by what seemed to be pots and pans and covered in green goo, but not enough to his his black and red eyes. That's what caused the crashed. It wasn't some intruder wanted to kill them all, just some pots and pans that had been dropped onto the floor.

Everything was alright.

Everyone was safe.

He was safe here.

(Safe from what, and he'll tell you the Galra Empire, or those who would want Voltron dead, but he knew he was safe here in the castle, but he wasn't, he wasn't safe, and he needed to be prepared for that, whatever that was.)

"So, Shiro, what brings you to the kitchen, are you hungry too, or was it the pots, I'm really sorry about that by the way…" Hunk's voice continued on, his ghoul eyes flickering back to normal due to the situation, but Shiro couldn't hear him anymore, couldn't notice the fact that another member of his team turned out to be a ghoul, because he was thinking about he got them, but he couldn't remember, because all he could remember was trying to protect them, he has to protect them, he's their leader, it's his job-

"Shiro, I need you to breathe. C'mon buddy, you can do this, breathe in 1, 2, 3…" The numbers were easy to follow, easy to breathe to, the same way that the sounds of his walking helped to calm him through the repetitiveness of it all. After what seemed to be five minutes of concentrated breathing (though, again, his internal clock had been thrown off long ago by space, so it could have been any length of time really) he was much more aware, aware enough to noticed that the both of them were sitting on the floor instead of standing, both of them surrounded by pots and pans and small puddles of green space goo.

"There we go. How you feeling there?" Hunk smiled at him, filled with innocence, and Shiro couldn't help but blush in embarrassment because he just had a panic attack in front of one of the very people he's supposed to protect and that's not very leader like and-

"Shiro, you have to stop thinking before you start panicking again." Hunk's voice sounded loud as he rambled on about everything and anything, clearing away any thought he might have had, leaving his mind blissfully empty, something that he had wanted for several months now (or whatever counted as months here in the middle of deep space). Shiro took another deep breath, apricating the ability to do so for once, and tuned back into Hunk's one sided monologue.

"-and I was worried, because, we're in the middle of space with nothing that me or Pidge could eat here except you or Lance or Keith, because, hey, ghouls are like that but I don't really-"

"Keith's a ghoul too." Shiro muttered, but then felt his breathing hitch at the sudden silence he had caused.

"Really? 'Cause, while that does explain so much about him now, it means that he can only eat food goo too unless we fond something else we can munch on." Hunk sighed, leaning back on his arms while he muttered about the advantages of the green goo that they had tried before going on their tour.

"Wait, ghouls can eat that stuff?!" Shiro exclaimed, sitting up straight than before, crossing his legs underneath him and watched Hunk smile at his attempt to interact with the with the conversation.

"I know right! I mean, it isn't the best thing that could exist, but I've also eaten worse things, like that time I've eaten human food…" Hunk rambles on about the different things that ghouls can and cannot eat, and Shiro listens because he's good at listening.

After a while, they both go to their own rooms, Hunk with a plate of food goo, just in case, and Shiro with a little more peace in mind, knowing that there was a way to feed all three (four) ghouls in his care.

He went to bed (see: start a fitness course) knowing everything was going to be alright.

* * *

 **A.N. Hey guys, here's another chapter, because for some reason my brain wants to write out chapters for all the stories I haven't given myself deadlines on. Welp, here you go :/.**


	5. V - Lance

_"Generally speaking, ghouls have a tendency to value life flippantly."_

Tokyo Ghoul, Volume 5

* * *

Shiro recons that everyone's taking everything pretty well, considering the circumstances.

The circumstances being the fact that they had all been suddenly thrusted into the role fighting against the Galra Empire while still being considered minors and should probably still be in education.

(Except him of course, but he was another story altogether.)

Well, everyone has their coping methods at least. Keith has taking up more and more training with his bayard and his knife, never with his kagane for a reason that Shiro will never ask unless necessary. Hunk has taking up to cooking up a storm of food that ghouls, humans and Alteans can eat, much to his love and joy as well as the others, finally able to have the same meal as those around them, even if it was just some mushy green substance. Katie – no, she preferred Pidge it seemed – probably had the unhealthiest coping method out of all the Paladins (excluding him of course), spending all her free time in front of the computer just tapping away, trying to find a way to get to her brother and father, not that he blamed her in the slightest.

Lance, the only other human on the ship, seemed to be taking everything well, all most too well in fact. He spends most of his time either with Coran, helping him clean up the castle, or with the Blue Lion, seemingly talking to her for hours on end about anything from what Shiro had seen. It was almost like there was no need of having a coping method for him, as if the situation of being the Blue Paladin of Voltron, Defender of the Universe was nothing.

Well, nothing compared to something that he had yet to learn at least.

(It's not like Shiro can really talk about coping, because, if the meltdown to Hunk a couple of days ago showed anything, was he really coping with this at all?)

Today is another training day, much to the delight of the other Paladins. They all managed to get to their Lions in a time which is considered to be 'alright' in Allura's eyes (because there was always something else for her to pick out, no matter how well they did), and they all managed to form Voltron in record timing, and despite the fact that Allura keeps going on about how they should be faster at forming Voltron, better at coordinating with one another to make Voltron more powerful, Shiro is content with how far they've already come, because he knows that they'll get there.

He knew what the problem was, anyway.

Shiro could feel that they weren't a proper team, not yet a close one like the Alteans wanted. Kat-Pidge had too many walls up, she wasn't comfortable to become the vulnerable left arm that protected them from harm, to the point that she had yet to even tell them about her gender. Keith was similar, so distrusting towards the rest of the group that they didn't automatically rely on him to be the instinctive right arm that takes out the enemy. Hunk was getting there, but he wasn't ready to lift the whole group up at the same time, supporting them just a left leg should. Even he wasn't ready to give out orders to the rest of the group, always second guessing himself, wondering what he was doing was always right, for him for the rest of them. Lance was great at what he was doing, making sure that he was the first to go forward and the person to catch the falling. His problem was that it almost seemed too good to be true, as if there was some catch in the small print of the contract that no one could be bothered to read before they signed the deal.

Maybe hiding everything was Lance's a coping method?

(It was one that he was too familiar with.)

They each left their Lions, congregating towards the main training room, Lance walking backward so he could bicker with Keith in a more effective way about who was better at flying while Hunk and Pidge talked about which sort of planet they'd land on first, one with peanut butter or one with nachos.

(Shiro could have sworn that he's heard this argument before-)

"Paladins! Today, we're going to be doing something a little different than what we've been doing the last few days!" Coran smiled, greeting each Paladin as they walked into the large white room, holding the mind meld helmets in one hand and waving with another.

Oh dear.

It had been unanimously agreed after the first time that they did this exercise that this was the worst out of all the ones they've done to date, which included being chained to one another as well as flying their Lions blindfolded. The idea of each of the them connecting their minds together on such an intimate level scared them, and no matter how much reassurance they got from the Alteans that this was common place on Altea, Shiro doubted it would be anywhere near the top of the list of 'good training exercises' of any Paladins' list.

"What's so different about it this time Coran?" Lance asked, still smiling despite the obvious uncomfortableness over the whole idea of even using the equipment that Coran had in his hands, let alone in a way that they haven't done before.

"Well, me and the princess have noticed that despite your growing ability to put your differences aside and work together as a team when the circumstances call for it, you don't seem to know what all these differences are." He said, his gaze shifting from Pidge to Keith to finally settling on Lance, who frowned and turned away from the eldest. "To rectify that, we have decided that you should shall be sharing what you've been hiding from yo-"

"There is no way that I'm letting the others go through my head again, and for that to be the purpose." Pidge stated, trying to make herself look bigger and more intimidating than she was. Keith nodded along with her, while Lance merely placed a small smile on his face but otherwise made himself and small and out of the spotlight while he let the others protest in his stead.

It didn't take long for Shiro to butt in and let Coran down lightly and suggest that they do the invisible maze instead, which, with a small amount of convincing, Coran sadly agreed to.

And, if he takes note of Lance's silence and his lack of making Keith walk into the electric walls, well, he doesn't mention them to anyone, but instead forgets about it when there's an explosion during a party.

* * *

So, the world moves on.

(Or, kinda, as they're not really on a world that can move, but the point still stood.)

Lance finally comes out of the cryopod after saving Coran, which the man is still surprised happened even after Shiro explained to him about what kind of person that Lance was, ready to jump in the way of a bullet for a person that he left didn't deserve it.

Pidge revealed her secret over her gender not long after Lance came out of his pod, and it seemed that Lance was the only one who didn't know if his reaction was anything to go by. Everyone's supportive of what's she's revealed to the group, making sure to get her pronouns right even when she isn't there. Shiro's just glad that he doesn't have to use the wrong pronouns anymore.

He misses the way that Lance opens his mouth to speak, but stops himself at last moment when Hunk exclaims loudly that he's going to be starting on dinner, and that he needs Shiro and Lance to help make sure that he's not going to poison them.

So, the world keeps turning.

(Well, that's what they assume anyway.)

The castle takes off, and they start to save the universe according to the fate that Allura has laid out for them. Sure, they run into a few problems, like some rebels stealing the Blue Lion, or the castle being 'haunted' by Allura's AI system, but they've started to become something great. They've freed a Balmera, they've made friends and allies with aliens that Shiro doubted that even Matt (wherever he may be now) could even make up.

In one way, it was amazing to see this, amazing to watch seven people come together to lead a front against the Galra.

In another, it was saddening.

For these kids, school had not even been a month ago, where they were only just learning about leaving the atmosphere. Now, they had travelled more than all of humanity combined, then cubed. Now, they had been roped into a war that had nothing to do with humans or ghouls, nothing that they needed to involve themselves with. Now, the environment was unfamiliar, confusing, taking more turns that they were prepared to take.

Instead of being in school on Earth like they should, they're instead learning about the threat that their home planet is under, and how they were wholly responsible if the Galra decided to take it over. Instead of leaving out normal lives on their home planet, they were fighting in a war that they should have to know was happening, and with no prior knowledge to help them with it.

But, the world still spins.

(Even if they are millions and billions and trillions of light years away from where they considered their world.)

* * *

It was supposed to be a simple intel mission to a Galra base.

Go in, get the information using Shiro's trusty prosthetic paired with something that resembles a memory stick that contain code that would download the local database, and get out again. Usually, Shiro had a Paladin with him, usually either Keith or Pidge due to the Blue and Yellow Lion being better at distracting, on the base to act as back up, while the others acted a distraction for the Galra so they wouldn't know that anything was amiss.

So, overall, it was very similar to many missions that the Paladins have now found themselves on during their time in space. They had knowledge from previous, successful, missions that this base contained no prisoners. Instead, they used it to store things of interest to the Empire, acting as a warehouse of sorts.

The catch?

The base wasn't a ship, it was located on a planet.

Of course, this doesn't sound too bad, until you look closer at the planet and realise that the planet has a huge layer of water, everywhere, meaning that the base was at the bottom of the sea of said planet.

Lance, of course, was delighted with this find, and was happy enough to act as back up for Shiro for this mission, smiling brightly at everyone and talking about how cool it was that they had finally come across a planet was only sea and was slightly dampened by the fact that there were no aquatic lifeforms for him to meet on this planet.

Lance, and Shiro for that matter, were less delighted two hours later when they found themselves cornered by a Galra wearing armour similar to Sendak's.

"Fuck!" Lance turned around to him in shock, though he made sure to keep his rifle aimed at the Galra opposite from them.

"Now, now, Champion, no need for such foul language, but instead let me welcome you to my, rather humble, abode." The Galra stepped forward, moving their arms to gestor their surroundings. "I am Commander Ftorplax, and everything that is on this planet, belongs to me."

There was silence in the room, only the hum of the computer behind them downloading the database onto the memory stick and the faint sound of breathing could be heard, until Lance broke the silence.

"Commander Fe-dor-planks? Wow, you, my- My man? My woman? My gender non-comforming buddy? Well, you have a weird name-" The Commander stepped forward, now within arm's reach of Shiro, growling lightly, cutting Lance from his words, his first, but not his only, weapon.

"It is pronounced Ff-tor-plax, you imbecile. My name is nothing to be made lightly of, Earthling. My race does not take our name as lightly as yours, for we must earn them. There is a proper punishment for a crime of this degree-" Before the Galra could continue Shiro had stepped forward in front of Lance, then thrusted his now activated arm at the Commander. They jumped back in surprise, before growling again and pushing forward into the fight, pulling out a short sword like weapon and deflected his arm that was aiming for their neck.

Using the momentum from the blade, Shiro twisted his body with the direction of the deflect, pivoting on one foot while bringing the other up to kick against the side of the Galra, causing them to lose their centre of gravity and trip to the side, letting out a gasp as the air was knocked out of them. However, they were quick on their feet, able to quickly crouch down into fall and use their feet to launch them forward towards Shiro, using their raw strength to push Shiro down onto his back with their entire body weight pinning him down, crushing his ribs and pushing all the air out of his body. The Commander smiled above him, looming over with their blade held loosely in his right hand, their left hand pinning Shiro's glowing arm down above his head.

"Ah, I wonder why it has taken so long for Voltron to be defeated, if their strongest cannot even last more than a dobosh in a fight?" They teased, rotating the blade slowly in their hands before lifting it up above their head. Shiro's eyes widened before closing tightly shut, as if blocking his view of the glistening blade will inevitably do, and in the last seconds, he couldn't help but to hope that Lance will do the same, he didn't want his blood on the kid's conscious-

 _BLAM BLAM BLAM_

Opening his eyes, Shiro caught the last of the shots hits the commander head on, causing their skin to instantly burn and blister, making them now impossible to identify, their armour smoking from the hit to chest with dribbles of purple blood leaving the wound, and the hand that was holding the blade was missing, while the weapon itself was three metres away from where Shiro and the now dead commander were located.

Shiro spent no time hesitating from quickly kicking the corpse off his body, scrambling to get away from it and the smell of cooking flesh, and instead turned to Lance, who held a bitter smile on his face, his deactivated bayard in one hand and the now full memory stick in another.

"Let's go."

Shiro numbly nodded and followed the Blue Paladin out of the base, leaving the smoking body behind.

* * *

"Hey Pidge! We've got the stick for you!" Lance said into the camera as he opened the conns to the Green Lion while starting up his own. Pidge smiled brightly in return, her eyes sparkling with innocence, and she looked down at her screens and controls without seeing the tension that was building up in the Blue Lion's cockpit.

" _That's great! Allura mentioned that she landed on a planet a couple of light years out, something about Coran wanting to some maintenance while we were on the mission, so I'll meet you there, okay?"_ She looked back at them, waved and then turned off her conns, making the video screen automatically close down. Exhaling softly, Lance took off from the base, and Shiro subconsciously clenched hard into the chair, vividly reminded of the last time that he was in a Lion with Lance.

The tension was choking, heavy on both of their shoulders, and Shiro tried to come up with a way to ask about what he was thinking without it sounding pitying.

He never wanted any of the other Paladins to make that decision.

"If you have something to say, say it now, since we've got some time before we get to the Castle-Ship." Lance said, his eyes not straying to where Shiro stood but rather on the space in front of him, his gaze seemingly stuck on the blue and purple nebula that laid some distance in front of them.

"How are you holding up?" Shiro asked, blinking in surprise at Lance's frown as he quickly let go of Blue's controls to turn around to look at him.

"That's what you're asking? Not why I thought that killing them was the best idea? Or telling me that killing them was the wrong thing to do, that I should have just left them live? Or that I should have gone about it in a different way, or that-" Shiro put his hands on Lance's shoulders as he crouches down to look at him at eye level.

"I trust your judgement of the situation, and I am going to be forever grateful that you saved my life, but I never wanted you to have killed someone. I know what it feels like to be in that sort of situation, so if you need-"

"Oh, would you stop patronising me! It's not the first time I've killed someone-" Lance cut himself off, his eyes widening in shock.

His black eyes, with swollen veins and red irises.

Shiro felt like someone had poured water over his head.

Lance was a ghoul.

Though, now that he thinks back, so much was now falling into place.

(Hindsight is a fabulous thing, after all.)

"Lance, I don't know your past, and it is yours to keep to yourself. I will always trust you to have my back, especially after today." Shiro said quietly, only for Lance to frown and turn away, back to the silence of the flying the Blue Lion. Sighing, Shiro stepped back and put his hand back onto the top of the chair.

After five minutes of silence and awkwardness, Lance broke the silence again.

"I grew up in Cuba, which has a similar ghoul situation to Japan. The ghouls have to fight to survive there, and since I'm the oldest, well, let's just say that the job of collecting the food feel to me after my dad was caught by the CCG." He goes quiet for a minute, either expecting Shiro to inject something into his story, or he's thinking of the right words to describe what he wants Shiro to know. "The area I grew up with had this gang that controlled the feeding situation, so if you wanted food, you had to be a member or-" he chokes on the words, and Shiro decides now is a good time to say something.

"It's okay Lance, you don't have to say anything more, you don't have to explain your reasoning." A watery smile, and silence again, but one that is more of understanding than tension filled.

It doesn't take much longer to get back to the castle, and by then Lance is back to his energetic self, smiling and boasting about saving Shiro, but never how.

(It wasn't until Shiro was about to go to sleep when he realised that he was the only human in space.)

(He knew he wasn't ready for the amount of stress it would cause.)


	6. 1 - Shiro

_[They] showed her another possibility. She must have pictured it, at least, for a moment. She might of asked... "What if I was... Accepted like that?"_

Tokyo Ghoul, Volume 6

X-X-X

Shiro only had to take one look at the ghouls and aliens that surrounded him, some of them unfamiliar and the others older than he last remembered, to know that things are different now.

He had died, time had passed, and he had missed almost everything, now leaving him too see the consequences of time passing.

There's more to time's presence than the growth of Lance's hair, the pink Paladin armour that Allura wears proudly, the height that Keith had gain, the scratches in Pidge's glasses and the fraying headband that Hunk still wore.

No, it wasn't until much later, when he realised that his hair was fully white from the quintessence, that he noticed the age in Keith's eyes, the guarded look of self-doubt that hides in Allura's, the quietness that now resides in Pidge, the boldness that holds Hunk up and yet weighs him down and the new stress lines and bags that rest underneath Lance's eyes.

Despite having this new body (what a weird universe he lived in, to not only be able to live on after death but to gain a new body and live again), he did not have the memories of the clone, of Kuron, his mind supplies the Japanese word, because, in the end, the clone had been more human than any of the other Paladins could have pretended to be. But, no, only an empty space in his mind from where the memories used to reside, leaving him with this black hole of nothingness after the fight with Zarkon, except with the vagueness of being in the mind space of Voltron for so long.

When he's helped into the Black Lion, Shiro makes sure to let it be known that he's expecting Keith to pilot by sitting on the floor, he asks how long it's been since the fight with Zarkon at Central Command, and he doesn't like Keith's hesitation, the way that he opens his mouth and closes it and opens it again and replies with 'roughly two years?', but it's more a question than a proper answer.

Shiro doesn't like it, he hates it, he keeps in mind to ask Lance when they next land, Lance would know something like this.

He leans against the pilot chair and a box of items that should have been in the Castleship (where is the Castleship?) as he beings to doze off slightly, feeling the calming pressure of not only Black, which is now far too familiar with him, but the other Lions, the heat that rolls off Red and clashes with Blue's ice, the strength of Yellow holding him up and the roots of Green keeping him down, and he wonders, and wonders, and wonders, what this all means for him.

He dozes as the others plan on where to go next, as Pidge mentions Matt and her father and Lance brings up his own his family (do they know yet?) and Hunk talks about Shay and his mums and Allura wonders aloud about other Alteans and Keith mutters to his mother about things that Shiro can't hear and doesn't mind not hearing, and he dozes as his arm feels lighter, as everything feels foreign after so long without the stimulant, and he dozes.

He's missed so much.

He missed them becoming a team.

X-X-X

He wakes up on his own, naturally, and he didn't know how much he's missed the simple action of waking up, of sleeping, of blinking and breathing, and the Galra, Keith's mum he remembers, is sat in front of him, staring at him frowning.

"You smell different from the others." She says plainly, and tilts her head, as if asking for an explanation for it without the words. Keith snorts softly, blowing his hair out of his face as one of his hands stay on the controls and the other goes to smooth the wolf (or something similar) while his eyes are still glued on the star line.

"He's human Krolia, the different species that live on Earth that we…" he trails off for a second, looking down at Shiro, hesitant to word it aloud, and Shiro can only grin brightly at the awkwardness that the younger is giving off.

No matter how long it's been, Keith is still that kid he met training in the dark, away from prying eyes.

"I'm the species that falls prey to ghouls on Earth." He supplies, and she nods and then they move on. That's it. Nothing else needed.

Huh. He forgot that he was the only human in space.

"We're not far from Olkarion now, only about quarter varg- about uh- about twenty minutes or so?" Keith stammers, and Shiro nods in reply and doesn't question Keith's uncertainty, he's still unused to how long time it himself, pulling himself up using the chair and began wondering around the cockpit, his now single hand skimming the boxes, looking at the familiar objects that had been placed in there in a rush, a lone figurine of a male Altean, but looked more like a human prince with a silver crown, a few loftily looking tomes that looked their age, a bunch of wires and tools that would look more in place in either the Yellow or Green Lions.

"So, the Castleship's really gone." Shiro sighs, and Keith can only nod at the words, and the silence that replies to Shiro's statement is the only acceptable answer. It carries all the hurt and pain of the last few hours, the last few years now, and Shiro doesn't know what to do anymore.

Shiro picks up a stray tablet and sat down on the floor again, resting the pad on his lap and opened it up, flicking through the recent apps: a game that required other players and dice, a blueprint of a ship made using quintessence, some code that was locked away. There's some videos saved onto the system, with thumbnails of the other Paladins sitting in a chair staring at the camera, of Lance holding himself on rope in a stylised position, of Voltron flying over a stadium. There are more pictures, some are selfies of Lance and the people he's met, of open robots to act as references for Hunk, screenshots of code for Pidge, official pictures of Allura and leaders of other planets.

"We here." Keith mutters, and it takes Shiro out of his mind and up at Keith, his eyes more purple than he remembers, but the scar seems to be the root of that problem, rather than the fact that his eyes have actually changed, but rather the close range of the both of them has caused a change of perception.

Or, maybe they have, who knows?

(He didn't.)

(He doesn't know how he got the scar either.)

(He feels as of he should have known that one.)

He follows Keith and Krolia off of Black, feeling off balance due to the missing arm, and his eyes widened as he looks around the planet, and the idea of it being two years into the future makes more sense, as gone were the trees that once loomed over everyone, and instead were tall buildings that fit in with the old science fiction moves on Earth.

He's missed so much.

X-X-X

They're led to a conference room, one with a big window of the developing, with some muttered words between Pidge and Ryner, before Ryner nods and smiles and leaves again, giving a small wave to the other Paladins as she does so, but not before side eyeing Shiro's missing prosthetic, and he gets the impression that he's going to be getting a new one before long, whether he likes it or not.

"So…" Lance starts, looking at Shiro with a small smile and red, bloodshot eyes while he leaned back in his chair. "Do you remember anything past the fight with Zarkon at Central Command?" He asks, and Shiro notices how he's able to avoid the word 'death', as if that was the worst thing that happened to him in his life so far.

(It wasn't the worst thing to have happened in his life. It just so happened to be the thing to stop it.)

"Nope. I've been told that it's been a while since then." Shiro replies, leaning his head on his only hand while looking at the other Paladins, taking in how much younger they all seemed like this, how much more relaxed the smiles looked, how much softer the eyes were.

They've done so much without him, and he's so proud of them for it.

"Wait, that means you don't know that…" Hunk cuts himself off, looking from him and Lance, eyes going back and forward, but then Shiro looked at Lance in confusion, Lance too looked confused, not knowing what Hunk was going on about. However, Pidge starts to lick her lips in nervousness, and Keith looks away to look at the wall, which had suddenly gained his interest.

None of them wanted to tell him, but since Lance clearly didn't know what was going on, Shiro stares at Keith instead, his head tilted slightly and his eyes now big and curious, his hair drooping into his face slightly, and then Keith turns to look at him and his eyes widen as he stares, and his jaw tightens; it's working, just a little more to go, maybe if he just pouts his lips just a little…

"Lance is a ghoul but unlike us he has actually eaten humans before like hunted them and stuff and he used his kagune to get us out of a situation and then he took a bite out of a Galra and please stop looking at me like that Shiro, you knew this would happen when you started that god damn pouting!" Keith all but screamed at once, before pointingly looking away from the elder with the grumpiest look on his face that reminded Shiro far too much of the kid who was upset that he could no longer train with his knife by himself.

(He missed that kid.)

Keith's words had stroke a core in everyone in a room, or at least, everyone who knew what it meant to be a ghoul, and the difference between a ghoul and a human, and now the room was filled with an uncomfortable silence, a thick, cuttable tension, as everyone holds their breath, waiting for Shiro to attack Lance, but then he looks over at the Blue Paladin, who is as relaxed as ever, leaning back in his chair and smirking at the Black Paladin with a mirth in his eyes.

Shiro is the first to break, as he tries to muffle a small snigger that comes out, sounding so foreign that, when he hears it, he doesn't recognise it. The muffled snigger however, becomes a snort instead, which then sets Lance off into small giggles. It didn't take too much longer for Shiro and Lance to fall into full on laughter fits, much to the horror to the others in the room.

"Are… Are we missing something?" Hunk asks under his breath, and Pidge just shrugs with a dumbfound look on her face while Allura and Coran talk quietly to Romelle and tries to explain ghouls and humans to her, but it didn't look like it was getting anywhere. Shiro's able to calm down somewhat, Lance still snickering but he tries (and fails) to get it under control.

"I've known for a long time now, not that my sense of time is any good at the moment." Shiro finally admits, and there's a look of confusion on the other's faces, of course there's a look of confusion on the other's faces, no wonder why Lance is still trying to stifle his snorting and Shiro smiles in a way that makes him realise he hasn't done in quite a long time now.

Shiro watches as Lance goes to open his mouth, to explain himself to the others and what happened for him to come out to Shiro but not to anyone else, but just as the words begin to leave his mouth, the doors slide open, with a brown haired man standing at the doorway, out of breath and his hair resembling ore of a rat's next, sweat moving slowly down his face and clothes looking like he had thrown them all on last minute in his rush to meet the other Paladins while his eyes were black and red and a bruise was slowly forming on his cheek, but whether he got that in a fight or just from running into a door, Shiro would never know.

It was Matt after all.

"DUDE WHAT THE FUCK!? I HAVE ONE WEEK OFF AND IT TURNS OUT THAT SHIRO'S A CLONE AND THE UNIVERSE ALMOST IMPLOADED AND THE CASTLESHIP'S GONE AND YOU'RE ALL GOING BACK TO EARTH AND YOU DIDN'T A LEAST THINK TO WARN ME OF THESE SORTS OF THINGS!" Shiro could only smile and blink at the sudden shouting, watching Matt's expressive face go from one person to another, slowly taking in everyone's appearance, frowning at the people he had yet to meet, before his view landed on Keith and his eyes widened in shock.

"Wait, Keith? What the fuck happened man?"

Yeah, Matt never changed.

He was glad someone hadn't.

X-X-X

 **A.N. And here it is, the final chapter. Wow, it was so much fun to write this, there were just so many fun things to add, and, well, I wouldn't be me if I didn't add my little bit of angst in there would I? As some of you may know, there are going to be more, mainly because some people need proper back stories while others need to have their own side stories that go along with the plot. So, keep an eye out of that :D**


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